If the South won the Civil War how would this change World War I ?

I was thinking it could possibly have The CSA on the Allies Side and the USA on the Central Powers side if Germany does not do any unrestricted Submarine warfare.
 
Consdering how utterly chaotic the events leading to the First World War where and considering that many of the main players were toddlers/fetuses/twinkles in their parents eyes when the ACW took place, it's probably very unlikely that we anything like our First World War taking place with this major PoD.
 
Consdering how utterly chaotic the events leading to the First World War where and considering that many of the main players were toddlers/fetuses/twinkles in their parents eyes when the ACW took place, it's probably very unlikely that we anything like our First World War taking place with this major PoD.

Well.. it had been argued that the ACW was a somewhat 'minor' thing in the planetary current order... effects contained to the USA and arorund. The Franco-prussian war had more effects...

But you have a good point indeed.
 
Reading TL-191, have we? Well, I'll try to be helpful.

As others have mentioned, butterflies would probably eliminate most of the main players of WWI and replace them with different people. Even the alliance systems would be different. For example, a France that intervenes in the ACW on the side of the Confederates would probably not form the Entente with Britain. Assuming that a conflict between Prussia on one side and France and/or Austria still goes through, which is likely, it may be possible to have a Franco-Austrian Entente vs. an Anglo-Prussian one.
 
Fears of a American front (Germany did buffooningly attempt to recruit Mexico) limit Allied reinforcements, making stalemate more likely.
 
Well.. it had been argued that the ACW was a somewhat 'minor' thing in the planetary current order... effects contained to the USA and arorund. The Franco-prussian war had more effects...

But you have a good point indeed.

What a fascinating rewrite of history. "It had been argued" being a wonderful phrase for people lacking the confidence in their point to make the argument. You don't have to believe in some special virtue or exceptionalism of the American experiment to look at the cold economic facts. After the withdrawal of Russia from World War I, the Germans have a war aim in the bag: a single front war, while gaining a huge swath of land in Eastern Europe. On top of that, the French are exhausted. What prevents this from going to hell is a flood of fresh troops from North America that is effectively bottomless. On top of this, there is what is the Cold, Unpleasant Fact of 'After 1900' - once Hitler declared war on the USA, it was done. Over. An utterly foregone conclusions that a flood of war material and men larger than anything Europe could produce would end it, one way or another.

Give the Lost Causers' their orgasm, and you remove all of that. Instead of just a glorious refighting of World War I in snappy gray uniforms in Northern Virginia, you have all of those resources stuck in North America, fighting over one sides right to work human beings to death without paying them. Even if you cast a wide butterfly net, then what? A World War II without Lend-Lease? A World War II that will truly be a sequel to World War I, of a long stalemate while Europe undergoes a decade of the Nazi's madness? I know a chic "Americans aren't really that great" is hip, but is this really an AH you want to see?

The Lost Causers' getting their 'Southern Way of Life' means a re-write of 20C. Forget World War I. Forget the Nazi's being slowly worn down. Forget our species getting to the moon. Forget the freaking Internet we write this on. So much of the 20C is the story of the incredible economic might of North America under one power, one set of laws. It changes everything, with butterflies unimaginable.
 
Hey there, I am of course not a lost cause guy or anything. :mad:

Granted, I can be irritating vague, but the importance of ACW in the world may be exagerated. It's an inner conflict whose consequences are kept more to the Americas, and a conflict like the Franco-Prussian one seem by factors as the french colonial empire and imperialism, the prussian-german might, etc, more important.

If the South won, at first the changes are not huge for the global system. It depends on things as if it survive, how it alignate, etc, etc.

The USA took time to reach the heights they are-where in. The USA have no special destiny per se. Just advantages.

Calm down.
 
Hey there, I am of course not a lost cause guy or anything. :mad:

Granted, I can be irritating vague, but the importance of ACW in the world may be exagerated. It's an inner conflict whose consequences are kept more to the Americas, and a conflict like the Franco-Prussian one seem by factors as the french colonial empire and imperialism, the prussian-german might, etc, more important.

If the South won, at first the changes are not huge for the global system. It depends on things as if it survive, how it alignate, etc, etc.

The USA took time to reach the heights they are-where in. The USA have no special destiny per se. Just advantages.

Calm down.

Most certainly :), and I'll take a chance to take a general swipe at Lost Causers without implying it of yourself. The thing here is that it does not need any special destiny (as I think I said). Its the simple economic and demographic weight of the US that makes it vital to history as it has played out. Remove that, and its a very, very, very different world. At the time, yes, the Franco-Prussian draws far more eyes. But go down the line, and the US presence is just massive.

But the whole "You have a choice: Lost Cause or Moonshot" is just so clarifying. (Because the N1 was a fucking disaster)
 
I kind of always thought even if Britain and France helped the South out during the Civil War, that an alliance between them would eventually grow to be impossible. OTL's Confederate leaders were already drawing up plans for conquering a lot of Mexico and the Caribbean. Britain isn't going to be happy with Confederate filibusterers in the Caribbean, especially since they expand slavery with every nation they conquer. With the French, the reason they were tempted to support the Confederacy was so they could establish their puppet empire in Mexico, this is going to get awkward when the French realize that their new buddies in Richmond have some designs on Mexican territory of their own.

So, I could envision maybe after France and Britain sit the CSA down and tell them to cut it out maybe the CSA starts looking for new friends. Berlin-Richmond Express anybody?
 
That's enough butterfly-killing to get you prosecuted at The Hague.

Seriously though, the American Civil War was a decade before German unification. That might not seem like much, but it's enough to throw off the timeline so much that there might not even be a world war, at least in the first half of the 20th Century.

Paralleling OTL events is one of the biggest cliches in alternate history. I don't recommend it.
 
The Lost Causers' getting their 'Southern Way of Life' means a re-write of 20C. Forget World War I. Forget the Nazi's being slowly worn down. Forget our species getting to the moon. Forget the freaking Internet we write this on. So much of the 20C is the story of the incredible economic might of North America under one power, one set of laws. It changes everything, with butterflies unimaginable.

You can probably forget the Nazis even being a thing. With all those butterflies swimming about we might see a Russo-German alliance with American backing in WWI against the motly crew of Britain, France, Austria, the Ottomans, and Japan. Meanwhile the CSA tries to avoid civil war.
 
The collapse of the CSA in the 1890s or early 1900s after the global drop in silver and cotton prices and the boll weevil reaching the CSA would certainly have an effect on global politics, mostly with the US having to undergo Reconstruction later than in OTL.
 
All this takes for granted no US Civil War 2.0

Whether the South wins early-1861-or late-1864 elections with a much worse Union performance, the South CANNOT secure its victory without Anglo-French Intervention. The suggestion of the French going it alone shows a lack of knowledge regarding Napoleon III's desires to keep the UK happy. If Nappy III intervenes alone for sheer imperialist shits-and-giggles on the side of the South he risks an ultimatum from London to withdraw.

If both countries intervene, its game over for the North. But their defeat comes with the knowledge that they were defeated by the two mightiest powers on Earth, not due to any great feats by the CSA. So, feelings of Revanche will be overwhelming. You will NOT be seeing "war exhaustion", "Vietnam Syndrome", or "better off without them" when the USA has been crushed in a civil war it was winning by the deliberate intervention of a pair of thousand pound gorillas.

I know we have a sizable population of Sun Never Sets-types on AH.com who refuse to wake up and smell the morning tea, but in this scenario, the CSA's "new friends" will be disappearing pretty quickly:

a) When the UK realizes the CSA has NO intention of even reforming, much less getting rid of, the institution of Slavery Ever.

b) Bismarck isn't falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his neck, so both the Austro-Prussian (walkover) and Franco-Prussian (curbstomp) Wars can be expected to go forward more or less on schedule. Continental powers like the AH Empire and Prussia aren't going to be impressed by events taking place in a civil war thousands of miles away. And victory against the Union (and assumably a somewhat better performance against the Mexican government of Benito Juarez) is going to have Napoleon III feeling his Wheaties[SIZE=-4]tm[/SIZE], not feeling more cautious regarding Germany. The man really did have poor impulse control.

c) The passage of the Great Reform Act of 1867:cool: and the founding of the Third Republic makes for another round of imperialist interventions against the Union (now a fellow democracy) extremely problematical for two countries that are now much more responsive to a larger full electorate. Post-FPW France is in no economic shape as it is for any immediate foreign adventures of such a scale, and there would I would assume be considerable political backlash brewing in the UK for having come to the rescue of a Slave Power in the first place.

YES, Brazil was a Slave Power, and Britain never went to war to destroy it. But its another matter if they had gone to war to SAVE it.:(


I kind of always thought even if Britain and France helped the South out during the Civil War, that an alliance between them would eventually grow to be impossible. OTL's Confederate leaders were already drawing up plans for conquering a lot of Mexico and the Caribbean. Britain isn't going to be happy with Confederate filibusterers in the Caribbean, especially since they expand slavery with every nation they conquer. With the French, the reason they were tempted to support the Confederacy was so they could establish their puppet empire in Mexico, this is going to get awkward when the French realize that their new buddies in Richmond have some designs on Mexican territory of their own.

So, I could envision maybe after France and Britain sit the CSA down and tell them to cut it out maybe the CSA starts looking for new friends. Berlin-Richmond Express anybody?

Prussia at this time was looking to make itself master of Europe, not look for adventures overseas. The Prussians/Germans didn't have a navy worthy of the name at the time. If trouble started, Berlin could offer them nothing. Besides, didn't Prussia have a pretty cool relationship with the CSA over the USA? The USA's relations with Imperial Russia were better, but still...

And the leaders of the Slavocracy took advice (never mind orders) from nobody.:mad:

Anyway, the South lacks the navy to be a threat to the Caribbean and the army will be tied up on the Union border.

That's enough butterfly-killing to get you prosecuted at The Hague. (1)

Seriously though, the American Civil War was a decade before German unification. That might not seem like much, but it's enough to throw off the timeline so much that there might not even be a world war, at least in the first half of the 20th Century.

Paralleling OTL events is one of the biggest cliches in alternate history. I don't recommend it.

1) And I say there is nothing wrong with killing butterflies provided we are not talking Mothra here. WWII is gone, no question whatsoever. The Bolshevik Revolution? Probably SOME kind of revolution eventually, as the Romanovs were that bad, but not necessarily of that kind.

The events leading up to WWI had much to do with the fact that there had been no Continent-wide European War since Napoleon was sent to Elba. I don't count the Hundred Days, Crimean War, Austro-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, and the Ruso-Japanese War. Those were all relatively brief and mostly just between two countries.

The decrepit monarchies/aristocracies in Europe had seen the technology of modern warfare eclipse their abilities to control them. The belief in quick wars when facing the gauntlet of massed machine gun fire is pretty good proof of that.

You can probably forget the Nazis even being a thing. With all those butterflies swimming about we might see a Russo-German alliance with American backing in WWI against the motly crew of Britain, France, Austria, the Ottomans, and Japan. Meanwhile the CSA tries to avoid civil war.

When since Napoleon had been defeated had German Powers been on the same side as Russia?

The collapse of the CSA in the 1890s or early 1900s after the global drop in silver and cotton prices and the boll weevil reaching the CSA would certainly have an effect on global politics, mostly with the US having to undergo Reconstruction later than in OTL.

That requires a full CSA surviving to the 1930s, rather than collapsing into national and state bankruptcy by 1870. Re-Union by buyouts?
 
The European situation was volatile and ever-shifting not just in the era immediately before WW1 but for much of European history. I have argued elsewhere, and indeed I continue to hold, that if France had intervened on the Confederate side in the American Civil War (and that would definitely happen if the UK intervened on the Confederate side, though that's so unlikely that I'd consider an intervention by France alone more plausible) the Franco-Prussian War wouldn't have happened.

To give a (brief) description of the mechanism: the Franco-Prussian War was deliberately set up by Bismarck, upon consultation with Moltke the Elder and other Prussian leaders, at a time perfect for them, i.e. when a crisis (the crisis over Hohenzollern candidature for the Spanish monarchy) turned up at a time when Prussia's army was extremely confident of its present superiority but worried that that superiority might soon be much weaker and when the other German states were firmly in Prussia's hands and could be counted on to side with Prussia. This was to a great extent due to the Mainz threat, a threat issued by France to Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War in which France demanded territorial concessions because of its fear over rising Prussian power in Germany; this persuaded the other German states that French expansionism could come against them even when utterly unprovoked, and came at just the right time that Austria was utterly defeated and humiliated so Prussia was their only credible defender. If France had intervened in North America, the Mainz threat would not have been a realistic option for France since either Napoleon III's forces would still be busy in North America ("So, Napoleon, you're threatening us with your army? What army? The one that's thousands of miles away? Yeah, we're terrified") or the war would be over but France would have just been exposed—by French experience, not by experience of Austria that could be discounted—to the utter failure of the French military system as it currently stood, and therefore 1870 France wouldn't have been as confident of its own military superiority over Prussia as its OTL self was (I could go into more depth here but let it suffice for the moment to say that French perceptions of countries' military abilities were not the same as the reality and we should never forget the difference), which made it confident to go to war against Prussia IOTL. Therefore Moltke, Bismarck et al would not have had the circumstances that made them choose to start the war IOTL.

So if you change the American Civil War with foreign intervention (which is pretty much the only credible way to reverse the outcome, from what I've heard—I know little about American history so I'll leave that to others) it's not just the Americas that will be changed; Europe too will become unrecognisable. For one thing, there will be no unified Germany.

The butterflies in the European balance of power will be the size of pterodactyls, e.g. France will be under a semi-democratic monarchy, the Prussian-led North German Confederation and Austria will be bitter enemies (with the southern German states fully independent and able to drift at will between the two local great powers, leaving the region looking distressingly like OTL's Balkan peninsula in the same time-period), the resolution of the Balkans in 1876-1878 will be completely different and Paris and Berlin will have no strong reason to have relations any warmer or cooler than any other pair of European countries. I'd argue that to suppose any recognisable WW1 with this sort of PoD is an improper assumption.
 
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YES, Brazil was a Slave Power, and Britain never went to war to destroy it. But its another matter if they had gone to war to SAVE it.:(

Actually, Britain did go to war with Brazil over slavery, in 1850. Granted, it was unofficial and the destruction of Brazil was never an objective, but there was a non-trivial amount of violence on Brazilian soil until the Brazilians caved and agreed to abolish the slave trade properly. A similar scenario is perfectly possible if a victorious CSA tries to re-open the slave trade or export slavery to areas Britain regards as it's sphere of influence, such as the Caribbean.

The decrepit monarchies/aristocracies in Europe had seen the technology of modern warfare eclipse their abilities to control them. The belief in quick wars when facing the gauntlet of massed machine gun fire is pretty good proof of that.

Decrepit? Seriously? An odd choice of words for Victorian Britain, or Bismarckian Prussia.

When since Napoleon had been defeated had German Powers been on the same side as Russia?

Dreikaiserbund.

As for the question, it's difficult to say without knowing how the South won, and in particular if it had foreign (especially UK) support. UK support is both extremely stupid (for the UK, it's a great play for the Confederacy) and extremely unlikely.

Losing the most unproductive and backward third of the country is not going to prevent the USA emerging as a superpower BTW - if anything, it might help it along.
 
I was thinking it could possibly have The CSA on the Allies Side and the USA on the Central Powers side if Germany does not do any unrestricted Submarine warfare.

The Confederacy accumulated $2.7 billion in public debt. 10% of their draft age white males served in the Union army. Even more black men escaped slavery, with many serving in the Union army. Overtaxed Confederate infrastructure was collapsing. Large sections of territory claimed by the Confederacy would remain under Union power.

Since Confederate politicians were all nominally Democrats, they didn't have political parties, they had factions, with men aligned on one issue frequently disagreeing on another. And they believed that losing a Presidential election was good enough reason to form a separate country. By 1900, there's a good chance the states of the Confederacy could have fragmented into "as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics" as Buchanan put it.

There were enough tensions in Europe that a general war some time in the 1890 to 1920 time frame was probable, but the alliances could form radically differently. Britain and Russia had been enemies for most of the 19th Century. Britain and France had fought more wars with each other than against anyone else. Prussia and Austria were rivals for control of the German states throughout the 19th century; while Prussian and Russian relations were generally good. If anyone in 1875 had claimed that in another 40 years Britain, France, and Russia would be allies against Germany and Austria, they probably would have been considered insane.

If an ATL Great War occurs, it might well be Germany and Russia against Austria and France, with Britain and Italy as wild cards that could end up on either or neither side. The Confederacy may not exist any more and would lack the naval forces to be part of any Great War.
 
Decrepit? Seriously? An odd choice of words for Victorian Britain, or Bismarckian Prussia.
"Monarchy" is an even stranger term for Third Republic France, perhaps one of the staunchest believers in a quick war, or - dare I say it - the United States?

"close adherence is urged to the central idea that essential principles of war have not changed, that the rifle and bayonet remain the supreme weapons of the infantry soldier and that the ultimate success of the army depends upon their proper use in open warfare" General John Pershing, 19 October 1917.
"we took decided issue with the Allies and, without neglecting thorough preparation for trench fighting, undertook to train mainly for open combat, with the object from the start of vigorously forcing the offensive." General John Pershing, 1931.
 
Hey there, I am of course not a lost cause guy or anything. :mad:

Granted, I can be irritating vague, but the importance of ACW in the world may be exagerated. It's an inner conflict whose consequences are kept more to the Americas, and a conflict like the Franco-Prussian one seem by factors as the french colonial empire and imperialism, the prussian-german might, etc, more important.

If the South won, at first the changes are not huge for the global system. It depends on things as if it survive, how it alignate, etc, etc.

The USA took time to reach the heights they are-where in. The USA have no special destiny per se. Just advantages.

Calm down.

At the time yes, but over time the US becomes a bigger and bigger player. By 1900 at the latest the US had the largest economy in the world and could no longer be totally ignored, even by the Europeans. A US that loses the ACW in the 1860s doesn't resemble OTL US by 1900. By this time the US economy had very large effects world wide. This is going to have wide effects on everything else. US trade will be smaller which will have unpredictable effects on the European economy. You might have a WWI and it might even have largely the same players but it will not resemble our WWI due to the economic effects of a successful rebellion even if the US (which seems likely) reconquers it later.
 
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